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Hollywood Pictures
Hollywood Pictures Corporation was an American film production label of The Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Similar to Disney's Touchstone Pictures and former Miramax and Dimension film labels, it produced films for a more mature adult audience with darker themes than Walt Disney Pictures. While then-Disney chief Michael Eisner at first intended Hollywood Pictures to be a full-fledged studio, like Touchstone, in later years its operations had been scaled back and its management was merged with the flagship Walt Disney Pictures studio. The division is brought the works of M. Night Shyamalan to theaters; its most profitable film was Shyamalan's breakout hit The Sixth Sense, which grossed over $600 million worldwide upon its 1999 release. History Hollywood Pictures Corporation was incorporated on March 30, 1984. Because of the success of Disney's more-mature film division Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures was activated on February 1, 1989. Ricardo Mestres was appointed the division's first president, moving over from Touchstone Pictures. The division was created to create opportunities for up and coming executives and double its feature film output to fill the gap left by the contraction in the industry which includes closure of MGM/UA's United Artists and financial problems at Lorimar-Telepictures and De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. With Touchstone aligned with Hollywood, the two Disney Studio production divisions would share the same marketing and distribution staffs. Hollywood was expected to be producing 12 films a year by 1991 and to share funding from the Silver Screen Partners IV. The company's first release was Arachnophobia in 1990. On October 23, 1990, The Walt Disney Company formed Touchwood Pacific Partners I to supplant the Silver Screen Partnership series as their movie studios' primary funding source. After the collapse of their just renewed deal at Paramount Pictures, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer moved their production company to Hollywood Pictures in January 1991. The division issued primarily inexpensive comedies for the first six years with a few box office flops films, amongst them Holy Matrimony, Aspen Extreme, Super Mario Bros., Swing Kids, Blame It on the Bellboy, Born Yesterday and Guilty as Sin. The division only had one box office success, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and one critical success, The Joy Luck Club, which did not out weigh the general anemic box office record of the division. On April 26, 1994, Mestres was forced to resign after the lackluster performance of the division. Mestres moved to long term production deal with the studio. On June 27, 1994, Michael Lynton was appointed as new division president after moving from the Disney Publishing Group, where he was senior vice president and oversaw domestic publishing units including Hyperion Books. Mestres left Lynton a few potential hits: Robert Redford's Quiz Show, the Sarah Jessica Parker-Antonio Banderas drama Miami Rhapsody, and Dangerous Minds, starring Michelle Pfeiffer. In 1997, Lynton left for a position at Penguin Group. By 2001, Hollywood Pictures had produced 50 films, but its operation had been phased out. After being dormant for five years, the brand was re-activated for low-budget genre films, similar to Dimension Films (once a Disney division itself, now part of Lantern Entertainment) or Sony Pictures' Screen Gems (part of Columbia Pictures), News Corporation's Fox Atomic (part of Fox Searchlight Pictures, now owned by Disney as of 2019) and Relativity Media's Rogue Pictures (distributed by former parent Universal Studios). The first film released by the resurrected Hollywood was the 2006 horror film Stay Alive, then Primeval and The Invisible. Disney stopped releasing under the label in 2007 as the company announced a focus on three core brand names Disney, ABC and ESPN, with other studio brands Touchstone and Pixar continuing, as well as soon to be acquired Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox, which were acquired in 2009, 2012 and 2019 perspectively. Filmography See also *List of Walt Disney Pictures films *List of Touchstone Pictures films References External links * Category:Companies Category:Media companies established in 1989 Category:Hollywood Pictures films Category:Disney production studios Category:Defunct American film studios Category:Film production companies of the United States Category:1989 establishments in California Category:Companies based in Burbank, California Category:Defunct companies based in the Greater Los Angeles Area Category:Entertainment companies based in California Category:Defunct brands Category:The Walt Disney Studios Category:Companies established in 1989